We want death also

Huxley forgot to tell that as we wantGod, poetry,real danger, freedom and last we want death also.Today science killing all our dream, myth and want make us a michine,a drum to dance on tune of robot..

Posted by: Ramesh Raghuvanshi | 7/4/08

The burden of the humanities:

"He ain't heavy, he's my brother."

Posted by: Zachary Bos | 7/4/08

humanities cannot save us

The humanities can not save us as nothing can save us. I am sickened by the number crunching of the rationalists and the hard scientists, but when we realize that Heydrich was a cultured man who played viola in a string quartet and who happened to kill Jews for a living, of what value was his humanist culture? Germany was the most cultured country in Europe, and they gave us the Holocaust also. In an ideal world the humanities would balance the myopia of the sciences, but in the real world scientists are as tunnel-vision blind as ever and i have listened to enough artists and musicians talk twaddle about their own work and other things to ever be impressed by them again Hard science cannot save us either. And if we insist on rejecting God Himself then our destruction is assured - without real and rational faith in Him our humanities and our sciences are but polishing the brasses on a sinking ship

Posted by: Steve Meikle | 7/4/08

Humanities

It is distressing when even intelligent people can't seem to understand what makes the humanities significant, or they insist that it be as simply-demonstrable as an equation or an experiment. A life lived teaches the value of the humanities with eminent clarity. But the "living" part precedes the proof of the value. This problem of demonstrability has always dogged the humanities and always will. The apparent rigor and methodological focus of the sciences are invariably held up, against all reason, as a valid comparison and implicit critique. The defenders of the humanities are seldom able to mount a defense because they accept the standards of natural science as the standards of debate. But the humanities deal with the conventional world, not the natural -- why is that not obvious? Why does it not merit attention? Perhaps because this is an area of debate and concern that we have failed to nurture. THe defender of the humanities shies away from stating his/her true case because he knows there is no ground prepared for such a discussion. Those in the humanities must learn to define their ground -- their domain -- so that at least some lucky few of the people will be reminded that minds are nourished in many ways -- free minds in particular.

Posted by: Jon | 7/4/08

Fish?

The main problem with this article is that the writer takes Stanley Fish seriously. In my opinion, Fish's name should never again be mentioned in print without reminding the reader that Fish was one of the editors of Social Text, the magazine that published a wholly fabricated article by Alan Sokal back in 1997.

Posted by: George Balanchine | 7/5/08

Our ongoing Humanity endangered

This was an illuminating article especially in its historical tracing of the character and definition of the 'Humanities'. Towards the end it does consider briefly our present situation in relation to scientific and technological innovations which are at once limiting and extending- redefining 'human nature'. There is much too much to say here and much of it is question, but I would just note one reason why Humanities are perhaps in less favor than they were, and one possible danger facing Mankind. The 'invention of invention' which Whitehead saw as a key factor in our Age has now moved into the realm of human body and brain. This combined with the cyber- revolution suggests that what Mankind may well do is invent itself out of its existence- create a successor kind of being more capable of enduring the humanly impossible extraterrestial environments we may need to ultimately survive. The principle of duplicating and replacing each and every human character and quality, the whole business of making every human essential quality an incidental and duplicable one - threatens the heart of what human beings are and have been. The 'single secret' is no longer Man but rather how to transform mankind into a different more enduring and durable species ( Or several such species) Again the excitement has gone into those areas in which we will 'decipher' and 'reinvent' the brain. Does this mean we are now in the business of putting an end to us? I don't know. It seems to me more than the Humanities as a field of Studies is at stake- it is rather our very existence as humans.

Posted by: Shalom Freedman | 7/6/08

A fascinating article

To a social scientist (an economist, in fact), a fascinating article. With two children who are studying English, modern languages, and history, and as someone who has himself taught ethics (well, business ethics, at any rate), I had begun to ask myself how the field of the humanities had changed in the forty years since I was an undergraduate. McClay's comments about Brave New World etc reminded me of Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange," with its question of when a person loses his humanity, and whether we as society should punish someone with the loss of his humanity.  Burgess answered in the negative.  Of course, Burgess' methods were not genetic engineering, but that's just because of the state of science when he wrote the novel.

Posted by: Robert | 7/7/08

Check Your Facts

Before you disimiss Stanley Fish for being a poor scholar, perhaps you should check your own 'facts': Fish was not one of the editors of SOCIAL TEXT. He was in charge of Duke UP (which published the journal) but was not responsible for the journal's editorial decisions. Before you dismiss what Fish has to say, perhaps you should take the time to read him.

Posted by: Richard | 7/8/08

Humanities

One sentence struck me as evidence that study of the humanities should include an encounter with a tradition other than one's own. McClay writes, ". . . one of the repeated themes of Western intellectual history is the revival of the present by the recovery of the past, a principle most brilliantly exemplified by the Italian Renaissance’s ­self-­conscious appropriation of classical ideals . . . " I think this sentence would be equally true if one took out the word "Western," because the same principle appears in other parts of the world. The Neo-Confucian revival of China, reaching its apex with Zhu Xi (1230-1300), is an example. Zhu Xi's synthesis of Confucian social and political philosophy with cosmological concerns raised by Buddhism has been compared to Thomas Aquinas's synthesis of classical Greek thought and Christianity. McClay's use of the modifier "Western" suggests a provincial assumption of Western exceptionalism, an assumption often based on ignorance of non-Western cultures. This may be unfair to McCray, who might not have meant to use the word "Western" in an exclusive way.

Posted by: Robert Entenmann | 7/8/08

Question

you wrote: "One is particularly aware of the problem if one is a teacher of American history, at a time when the state of general knowledge of our past is abysmally low and sinking." -- but is this true? I've heard this all over the place, that more people don't know, say, the fifty states, than ever before. But more people are in school (in all levels) than ever before. Are there really fewer intelligent people out there, or is the crowd of people studying just much bigger? I think this is a real lynchpin of part of this essay. Do you have any evidence, one way or the other?

Posted by: Chris | 7/10/08

A Discourse of Function

Mr. McClay's essay is a fascinating piece of reading (I assume that's a prerequisite for writing in the field of humanities.). The essay - I believe - can also trace its lineage back to the 19th century (or perhaps even earlier) when certain fields within humanities started to take a defensive stance against what seemed to be rising (and dull) rationalist intellectual hegemony. This family tree sure has its branches, but a central theme has been "functionalizing" humanities, that is trying to prove their worthiness (for funding?) by assigning some higher function (a "burden") to research and education in these fields. This discoursive strategy gained further importance as social changes dropped Latin and Greek (Arabic in my country, Turkey) from curricula. A similar tension can be found in the work of the literary scholar who wants to investigate science fiction or comics, but needs to establish their relevance for "high culture" first. Stanley Fish, on the contrary, emancipates humanities from such a burden by asserting that they serve no other purpose than entertainment. It is clear that in the US context that's cultural heterodoxy, a reductionism if not a blasphemy. But here's another and empathic perspective: Isn't the enduring respect (and not specifically the demand) for humanities in an age when they have no higher purpose to serve prove by itself their worthiness? Furthermore acknowledging or assuming the "uselessness" of humanities per se might put us into a better position to discuss the relevant merits and methods of education and scholarship in these disciplines. Then we might even be able to discover a public good dimension (vs. private entertainment) in humanities.

Posted by: Evren Güldogan | 8/5/08

simplistic dismissal

The reference to Nazi Germany and Heydrich is a bit simplistic, don't you think? After all, few would claim in an unqualified way that the humanities will save us, or that they are valuable divorced from other influences. Of course the example of Nazi Germany tempers any absolute claims, but who is making them? But there might be a distinction made between two types of appreciation of the humanities: 1) the external valuation of the humanities as a sign of sophistication, civilization, or hipness; and 2) the embrace of the humanities as a humble and insightful reflection on the human condition. It seems to me that when the celebration and the support of the humanities has been accompanied by brutality, the humanities is being used in the first sense rather than the second. I think it is difficult to reflect deeply on the 'human' within the humanities and still proceed, unthinking with acts of brutality. That is not to say that this does not not happen. But it is to say that in these cases, the humanities might serve as a check if they are approached with humility and self-critique.

Posted by: Justin Baird | 8/7/08

Social non-scientist

It's a lovely and perfectly correct irony that an economist should need to teach himself business ethics. The reason why the humanities are in trouble is that they have sat by while economics takes over de facto hegemony in the discourse on, post-religious, human purpose. And, by the way, economists are not scientists, social or otherwise. They are simplistic and debased humanists.

Posted by: John M | 8/14/08

humanities

Right on!Yeaaah for the record keepers and praise for the story tellers.

Posted by: pam | 11/17/08